The Brick Connection – A novice Lego fan explores the great brick world of LEGO

Welcome to a special Wednesday edition of The Brick Connection...brought to you by my strong need to get the hell out of dodge!

I’ve saved up quite a few vacation days and it is time to start using them. So I am gifting myself with a 4 day weekend.

I’m sure you all greatly look forward to Thursday every week, knowing it’s the day I post a new blog, but this week you get it a day early.

You’re welcome!

And this week was also special because I got to play with LEGO!!!

I finally got tired of talking about LEGO without playing with LEGO so I had to create a solution. No, I didn’t go spend my own hard-earned money on LEGO sets to play with. And no, I didn’t go spend company money without asking permission on LEGO sets. 

I just worked with what I had.

What I had…have are two LEGO sets. One very small one based on The LEGO Movie, and Rey’s Speeder from The Force Awakens sets. Neither were difficult builds, even for this novice. I did blogs on each of them. The LEGO Movie one was just for fun and I did that originally as part of a fun company speed build competition. It was actually the first LEGO set I ever built. (At least I’m pretty sure. I think as a kid I just played with basic blocks, no fancy sets.)

Rey’s Speeder was my first real LEGO set as a real-ish LEGO fan. And I LOVE it. Building it was a joy. Blogging about it was a joy. Vlogging about it was a joy. Seeing the real speeder in action in the movie a couple months later was a super duper joy.

So here is the before picture of the two sets:

Then came the super hard part. Taking them apart. It wasn’t physically difficult taking them apart, although some of those tiny pieces are stubborn, but emotionally difficult; emotionally painful! Especially taking apart Rey’s Speeder. My baby!

I’m upset about taking apart a relatively small set that I built with LEGO’s instructions. How do people take apart MOCs for which they actually used their own creativity and imagination to build and spent hours upon hours working on? Forget my lack of creative building skills; I don’t have the emotional strength it takes to be a hardcore LEGO fan.

Back to the task at hand.
I forgot how many dang pieces were in Rey’s Speeder. It looks so small. There were a couple little pieces still attached from the LEGO Movie set that I gave up on trying to separate.

So once both sets were taken apart, here is what I had to build with:

I didn’t think I would be able to use all these pieces, especially since there are so many small ones and ones that were pretty specific to the sets they came from. While building I just decided that I would try to use as many as I could and at least try to use one of each type of piece. But there were some funky pieces I didn’t even attempt to do anything with.

Unfortunately from these two sets there were not a lot of traditional bricks. I think it’s much easier to build your first MOC with a few dozen 2x4’s, not this random junk.

I tried to group the similar pieces together before building so it would be easier to find the types of parts I would want/need while building. It gave me flashbacks of helping Ryan sort his LEGO last year. I wrote about that for the blog: Take Your Snot

As I was working on this, I had to laugh because this is what everyone thinks I do all day when I tell them I work for a LEGO accessory company. Which is just silly. How do you help run a company if you’re playing with another company’s toys all day? There is actual work to be done.

So anyway, I’m buiding…

Here’s the first picture I took while building. I actually built some parts and then took them off. So some of this got changed or rearranged. 

I first worked on this last Friday afternoon. Here is what I had done before I went home, with many pieces left to use:

A lot of this is in the finished product, but not in the exact placement you see here.

My main problem was a lack of a base for this MOC. I ran out of plates quickly, so I was stuck with a limited amount of space to actually build on. But hey, it forced me to think outside the box I guess.

When I got back to building on Monday, I decided I wanted to use the doors from Rey’s Speeders like wings so I had to rearrange a few things to do that.

You might be thinking, wings for what, Cori? What the hell are you actually trying to build?

Good question.

I didn’t really have anything in mind when I started building. Again, the pieces I had to work with, both in quantity and usefulness limited my already limited building abilities.

I decided that it didn’t really have to be something specific or even something in general.

I just wanted it to be something different than what I had before. I wanted to just be able to show that I can put different LEGO parts together in interesting ways, without following any instructions.

One thing I did decide about this MOC was that it was going to hover. So I used the rounded 2x2 pieces with a smooth curved shape (I don’t know what they are called). I spread them out on the bottom of the contraption and voila! It kind of hovers, just like Rey’s Speeder. I’ll show the bottom of this thingy ma bobber in a bit.

The last thing I decided to do as I put the finishing touches on this MOC was to manipulate the color scheme/pattern where I could. Make it look nicer I guess. So I added all the maroon pieces I could that I hadn’t used yet and made sure the colors didn’t clash. (It was basically just maroon and gray pieces though, so it wasn’t anything crazy.) I’m also a fan of SNOT, so I SNOT-ed my MOC up where I could, using as many SNOT pieces or vent/grill pieces as possible.

And what was I left with in the end?

....






This:

I guess if I had to identify this piece in some way, I would call it a hovercraft of sorts. I gave it the hovering look. There are wings. I used the pieces of the engine from Rey’s Speeder so it also looks like it has an engine. The pieces with the control panel stickers from The LEGO Movie set are there so that adds to the Sci-fi look.

I don’t know. It looks cool. 

There are a few details I can’t really show in the pictures, but I enjoy them. There are some actual “play features” I guess you could say. I included the shooters from Rey’s speeder. There’s a wheel that you can rotate. What could be considered the back of the MOC has the “engine” and it rotates. Not 360 degrees, but maybe 260. There’s a hinge piece that opens and closes for no apparent reason. 

It can be picked up altogether with one hand, but it’s definitely not the most stable of builds. 

This “thing” (maybe I should give it a name, like when people name their cars) will not stay this thing for long. I want Rey’s Speeder back. But it was a fun experiment and it was nice to do something more LEGO-y for this LEGO blog.

I like it. It’s different. It’s unique. It’s a MOC.

And now I’m just going to let it speak for itself.

What do you guys think of my first MOC? Should I quit while I’m behind? I would be interested in hearing what you guys think? But then again, that would involve you actually commenting on the blog, so I won’t hold my breath.

But if you took the time to read about this endeavor of mind, thank you.

Have a great 4-day weekend! Oh, you guys don’t have a 4-day weekend?

SUCKS FOR YOU!

Until next time…should I submit this MOC as a potential LEGO set on the LEGO Ideas site? I will take your silence as a tacit endorsement.

*Compliments, general feedback, and constructive criticism are welcome. Any haters that are gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate can go step on some Lego with their bare feet.*